Despite Gaza toll, Israeli media focus on Israel

ASHKELON, Israel 
Israel's TV screens, radio broadcasts and newspapers have been filled with images of terrified Israelis fleeing to shelters, damage from Hamas rocket barrages and casualty reports.

While international media have focused on Israel's assault on Gaza, including the deaths of more than 900 Palestinians, Israeli media are reporting the war through a different prism. With almost no access to Gaza, and an overwhelming sense the offensive is just, they have emphasized the Israeli side, which has suffered 13 deaths.

Images of lifeless Palestinian babies, bombed-out apartment buildings, and donkey carts piled with blankets and mattresses as Gazans seek to flee are buried in Israeli newscasts and newspaper pages, almost detached from the narrative.

"Israel is at war now, and naturally, the images that most interest it and the reports that most interest it are what is happening with the soldiers in battle who have families at home, and everything that has to do with the Grad and Qassam (rocket) fire," said Israeli Channel 10 TV commentator Motti Kirshenbaum.

"But to say the Israeli public isn't exposed to everything that is happening is not accurate," he said, because Israeli media do cover it and Israelis have access to international media, including Arab channels.

Many Israelis, however, distrust foreign media and don't turn to it for news. They think the outside world is dismissive of the trauma Gaza militants have inflicted on southern Israel during eight years of rocket fire.

They feel the world has not grasped that the rockets amount to a death by a thousand cuts that could ultimately make parts of the country unlivable, and that Israel's inability to stop them is read by its Arab foes as a fatal weakness.

"We watch only Israeli TV," said Yael Weinberg, 24, who works in a Jerusalem bookstore. "Foreign TV is not doing a good job at covering the conflict. They do not try to understand our side."

Neither side has shown much attention to the other's ordeal. Arab coverage of the war tilts heavily toward the Palestinian suffering, with the flagship TV station, Al-Jazeera, focusing on grisly images of the dead and wounded and calling the offensive a "war on Gaza" – suggesting it's a campaign against civilians, who are thought to account for about half the casualties.

Al-Jazeera has paid marginal attention to the Palestinian rocket fire, although it has carried images of Israelis affected by rocket attacks and broadcast footage of Israeli wounded.

With one-eighth of Israel within range of Palestinian rockets, Israeli newscasters regularly break into programming to report on an incoming rocket alert or landing.

And with Israeli casualties low, the actual fighting off-limits to reporters and lots of air time to fill, soft news often carries the day. On Monday, state-owned Israel Radio even ran a spot on how chickens raised near the Gaza border have grown accustomed to rocket fire.

Critical items on the war are rare, and those who express empathy with the Palestinian people court angry viewer responses.

One top news anchor, Yonit Levy of Channel 2 TV, has drawn the ire of more than 30,000 petitioners for saying at the end of one broadcast that "it's hard to convince the world that the war is just when we have one dead and the Palestinian people have 350."